


odds & ends

by zoehannah



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-07
Updated: 2013-12-01
Packaged: 2017-11-20 12:55:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 10,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/585649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoehannah/pseuds/zoehannah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Hunger Games ruins everyone. Even its winners.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Odds

It takes him fourteen years.

She wins her Hunger Games (the 60th) at 15 years old. Brutus is 25 at the time and is sitting on a comfortable couch in the middle of his Capitol apartment.

Enobaria Lapsis is the youngest volunteer from 2 in a decade. She had so much time, everyone lamented when she stepped proudly up onto the stage. So much time in which to hone her skills and make herself a Victor, and she threw it all away on the off chance that she'd win. The male tribute from 2, Julian, is 18 and powerfully built – the standard, for all the volunteers that come from Brutus's district. And there, next to him, is this wiry, tallish girl who looks for all the world like she should be sitting in a classroom taking notes. Not throwing knives into dummies at the Training Center.

But Brutus has a bad habit of picking favorites, and he would be lying if he said Enobaria is not his favorite for the 60th Games.

In the next week, the little girl from 2 transitions. She goes from having 1:20 odds to 13:1. Her clothes rip in the Arena and her muscles are defined, her skin pale but tanning quickly. She becomes less of a child and more of a warrior, a bloodthirsty being unafraid to kill.

He is proud.

Fourteen years later and Enobaria's odds have probably increased astronomically in her favor. The position of Capitol Darling has been passed over to Cashmere Clear from District 1 (and, unbeknownst to him, Katniss Everdeen will be crowned this title in just a few days), but that doesn't make Brutus's favorite any less dangerous. Her teeth end in sharp golden points, and two months after she has that done, she waltzes into the Victor's Village with a diamond in her left canine.  
Brutus is never sure if this decision is entirely hers. On one hand, it is exactly the type of thing Enobaria would do.

On the other, she enjoys eating, and that's hard to do when there is a large possibility of biting through your own tongue with every helping of truffle-glazed potatoes.

Clove volunteers for the 74th Annual Hunger Games, and when he sees the glint of malicious potential in her gunmetal-grey eyes, it reminds him strikingly of Enobaria. (She's sitting next to him eating ice cubes at the time.)

"Cato is the best we've had in years," she says, and a glassy crunch issues from the cushion to his right. This is a yearly ritual, watching the Reaping on television from Brutus's mansion. "Who volunteered from One?"

Brutus shrugs. "Gloss is trying to get his buddy's daughter to do it. Glimmer."

"Glimmer?" She quirks an eyebrow and pours the rest of her glass of ice into her mouth. "Glimmer Eustacia Quinn, daughter of Gild Demetrius Clear?" Now it is his turn to stare at her skeptically.

"That Glimmer. Sure."

"Fuck," says Enobaria, chewing her ice loudly, "you really think Cash's niece can do this?"

"Cashmere did it."

Enobaria rolls her eyes. "Pure luck. Anyways, guess the odds are in our Clove's favor, if that's who her biggest competition is."

"Her biggest competition is Cato," he says calmly. "Besides, I thought you didn't pick favorites." Enobaria snorts and stands up, folding her arms.

"I've been down to the Training Center. I've met her before." She grins, golden and sharp. "Cato better watch his back. That's all I'm gonna say."

"Are you staying here?" he asks her as she walks to the doorway. She turns around and gives him a look of pure acerbic contempt.

"Here?"

She shakes her head, half-laughs.

"In your dreams."

She leaves and he turns off the television.

Too cocky for her own good.

She always was.

 


	2. Chapter 2

If he were to choose what he remembers most about the 74th Games, it would be some kind of twisted three-way tie between the three events (some exciting, one not).

The first of these memories is a little inconsequential. 

Cato and Clove are Careers through and through, and they are military, passionate and calculated about everything. Brutus loves it. For the 73rd Games they had two big-headed idiots who had no ideas about strategy or anything of that sort. But every word Cato and Clove speak is chosen well and for a reason; there is no wasted chatter with these two. Brutus wants Cato to win just so that they can have drinks in the Capitol every now and then and discuss the Arenas of their own personal games. He doesn't wish that for every tribute.

He knows Enobaria feels the same way about Clove. Which is strange, and amusing, because Enobaria's brand of showing affection involves a lot of stumbling around analogies and acting stoic. And offering to kill people for whomever she's feeling warmer than usual towards. It can be unnerving, and it has put off so many Capitolian men who are after her charms – or, rather, lack thereof. But to him? It is incredibly amusing, watching Enobaria and Clove throwing steak knives across the dining room of the District 2 Capitol-Designated Living Space and engaging in fistfights across the living room floor.

Sometimes Enobaria watches television with him after the tributes are asleep, because she hasn't had a long day of training but she does want to show off how Clove dislocated her shoulder today and she's going to be a terror in the Arena, and she has no doubt of her potential to be a Victor.

Brutus often feels like rolling his eyes at this. Because, sure, Clove is more than just a scrappy fighter and her skills with knives are reminiscent of Enobaria's own – but Cato. Cato is smart. And Brutus isn't going to lie – he wasn't expecting that, not with a burly volunteer from 2. But Cato is deliberate in every parry and every strike of the broadswoards they practice (illegally, in fact) with. Cato slices the limbs off every dummy in the Training Center without even breaking a sweat. He is of a caliber that Brutus thinks is close to his own. Not quite, but with a bit of training up and the requisite crown of golden laurels on his head?

It could work. Cato could do it.

District 2 hasn't had a victor since Enobaria won fourteen years ago. This makes for a lot of elbowing from Finnick Odair at Capitol parties, and a lot of money owed to Cashmere and Gloss. Cashmere and Gloss are his and Enobaria's perpetual drinking partners, for no other reason than to maintain that Career alliance that they feel most superior in. (Cashmere, he's discovered, can drink them all under the table.)

And this year, all of that could change.

But his most vivid memories of the 74th Games are not of talking strategy and sponsors with Enobaria (and by talking, Brutus is referring to "spirited debates" that end in smashed wine glasses), slipping a couple drops of some half-legal substance into some Capitol socialite's drink to get some extra sponsor money, or even broadsword practice with Cato. There are a couple of nights, after Cato and Clove have settled in nicely to a routine at the Training Center, when they both get to the apartment (the Designated Living Space, actually), and the Avoxes have laid out an expansive dinner for them.

He's getting him and Enobaria more wine (because Enobaria is always fun with more wine) when Cato and Clove, sweaty and without the energy to bother with overlong Capitol showers, collapse into chairs next to them and dig in to their food. It is not a night of much conversation, but it's the most relaxed he can remember being in a long time. And across from him, Enobaria actually smiles once, and it isn't tinged with malice or the knowledge that she's about to rip your throat out.

And it's that that he remembers most.


	3. Chapter 3

The memory that stands out freshest, most painful in its explicitness, is the death of Clove.

Normally, when a tribute dies (and they all do, eventually, and he figures that as mentors they should be prepared for shit like this by now), Enobaria vents her frustration by bribing Atala to let her throw knives in the Center. She usually comes back a little bloodied and then goes for drinks with Cashmere, who, Brutus has gathered, is horrible with empathy in general. Well, that makes two of you! he always snorts when Enobaria mentions this dispiritedly. The woman from 1 usually does nothing but rub it in, however unwittingly.

It's not the grieving process he envisions, and Brutus has to envision, because he cannot recall what it feels like to grieve, but it is definitely what he expects from Enobaria. 

When they televise Clove's death, Caeasar Flickerman's voice is imposed over her screams. "Ooh!" he is saying theatrically. "That looks painful!" There's a nod from Claudius Templesmith, and then the bang of a cannon. Caesar brings up a picture of Clove and says that that's another of the Career pack taken out, and makes some comment about Thresh's strength being something nobody will want to count out now! And then there's some impressed comments from the both of them about Thresh's mercy re: District 12 Starry-Eyed Lover Girl, and some conspiratorial whispering about the state of District 12 Starry-Eyed Lover Boy, back in the cave.

And this whole time, Brutus is watching her for some sign of a reaction. She is watching, dead-eyed, as they replay Clove's death and bring up a list of fallen tributes. Unfeeling, cold, as he knows her best. As they rewind and show Cato, crouched at Clove's side, holding her hand and begging her to stay with him. (Cato, he thinks, is not ruined yet.)

When they go to commercial, he reaches for the remote and turns it off.

That night, she crashes into bed with him, for the first time ever and it took him fourteen years, but she's with him.

It's not quite what he expected.

But then, she never is.


	4. Chapter 4

When Cato dies, she understands.

Quietly, which is rather unusual for her, but she looks more tired than usual that evening. Like she's been waiting forever for something and is starting to be exhausted by it. He figures that after a lifetime spent pandering to the Capitol's every desire just to keep a relative level of sanity intact, he should be tired, too.

He is.

"We should go home," he says, because with the death of two more tributes, there is nothing left for them here in the Capitol. And with one of the two from 12 looking to take the victory, he doesn't know if he can stand a banquet with Haymitch getting wildly drunk at the seat next to him.

She nods.

"We can't get away from them, can we?" she says quietly, leaning against the cool glass of the train window and watching as the shiny fortresses of 1 speed by them at breakneck pace.

"Get away?" he clarifies.

"The Capitol." Her voice is hardly audible. "We're all just pieces in the Games." He says nothing; she smiles wryly, full of regrets and anger. "Even though we won. And to think. Cato and Clove, you and I, we're the best we can do."

The best, he thinks. The best of what they can become.


	5. Chapter 5

The first time Brutus kisses her – really kisses her, no polite pecks on the cheek or open-mouthed hunger from that night at the apartments – it is surprisingly expected. It happens like this: he tells her how long he's wanted to kiss her for, and she dares him to do it. As with seemingly everything about Enobaria, it begins with a challenge.

Her lips are soft and she keeps them closed – no golden points to tangle around. He can feel the pressure of her palms on his shoulders, and the slight dig of her fingertips through the fabric of his thermal shirt.

Enobaria decides when she is finished kissing him. She breaks them apart, stands up suddenly and moves to the window, and when he joins her there, she looks deliberately away.

He wants to ask her if she is okay, but he doesn't know what she would say to that.

"I – " she says, and then stops. "Why?"

It's a simple enough question, but it demands such a complicated answer. He clears his throat, and then shrugs; any ideas of a planned speech fly right out the window.

"I don't – I respect you," he says finally.

"You respect me." She still does not turn, but he doesn't miss the hint of derision in her voice. He supposes it must sound silly, but it's true. There are so few people who he respects these days, really feels he owes some kind of debt to. And people he cares about? Only her, only she has a space on that list.

"Of course," he tells her. "Of course I do."

Enobaria sighs. He touches her arm and wills her to catch something left unsaid in that touch.

"It doesn't work that way." she chokes. "You and I are always going to be – there is no way out of this, you know that."

"You think I don't?" He shakes his head and looks out the window, but he sees nothing beyond the reflections in the glass. "There will never be a way out, but you're here."

She looks at him, finally, and he turns so that their gazes meet. "Me?" she repeats, sounding almost startled. Then her expression softens, the glow of the firelight bouncing off her cheeks. Her eyes flicker down, then up, then back to him, and finally her fingers land near his collar, her lips on his again.

And all at once, she's there.


	6. Chapter 6

Kissing becomes frequent. He learns things about her and so he no longer has to wonder.

Some of these things are intrinsically disturbing, of course. She recounts each and every one of her six kills with perfect detail, her voice hard-edged and calm. He supposes he shouldn't be surprised at that; after all, their only worth is measured in bodies.

But other things are delightful, or as close as they can be – he doubts they'd be so lovely to anyone but him. There's just something, he thinks, about a girl who can throw a knife.

Nobody comments on this new kind of togetherness that they've found. Not outright, anyways; Gloss grins at one of the parties, elbows him roughly, and can't stop the guffaw from leaving his lips. He can see Cash from across the room, her eyes shaded in blue and gold, sliding in a knowing glance towards them. Either nobody else notices, or none of them care. It doesn't matter. Brutus doesn't feel like pressing the issue.

Autumn turns into winter and the filled houses in the Victor's Village light up with square yellow windows. The snow falls thickly in District Two, drawing the caps of the mountaintops all the way down to the foothills, blanketing the roads with dark slush. It covers the walkway up to his house and, one day, arrives in four-foot drifts that cover the bottoms of his windows. The kitchen stays warm.

Enobaria's hair darkens, all the way down to the color of blackened coffee beans.


	7. Chapter 7

In the second month of winter, he asks her questions.

It feels like a natural progression, and she asks them back. They lie awake at night, as they always do, but now there are words to fill the silence. He finds himself telling her things that he has never told anyone else. What he can remember of his parents, for instance, though he hasn't seen them since he was six years old. He finds himself trusting her more than is strictly necessary, but he doesn't ask if she trusts him too.

"Did you ask for them to have your teeth done?" he says one night. He can tell this one takes her aback, because her spine stiffens a little beside him, her hair that runs in rivers over his arm moves slightly as she shifts.

"No." In the darkness, he hears her slight intake of breath, as though she is going to laugh. "But I did ask for the diamond. I felt like I should have something of my own."

She leaves it unsaid, of course; they have nothing of their own. Not in this house, or anywhere else, and it can all be taken away from them at the flick of the right person's fingers. Even their status is artificial; that, too, will be taken away when they are replaced with younger versions of themselves.

"Did it hurt?" He surprises himself with the question; he hadn't meant to ask it, but now that he has, he finds himself truly wondering. Would it hurt, to have them file down bone and cap it in gold? Was it painted on, like nail lacquer, out of a bottle by those giggling aestheticians?

"Not worse than anything else," she says softly, and for some reason, not even the words but the tone of her voice make him draw closer to her, pull her tighter to him.

"But you have me," she adds, as if it's a prologue to 'something of my own', a hopeful lilt on the last word.

He nods, and she does not see; she feels.


	8. Chapter 8

In the third month of winter, on a Saturday midmorning, they are finally assigned to go to the Training Center. This is a rotation which happens every two weeks, but they have been forgotten about since early this year. Brutus knows this because in the kitchen Enobaria has a calendar, on which she marks off days since she has had to set foot in the Gold Training Center. When the telephone on its hook rings, Enobaria takes her calendar down, folds her arms, and sighs resignedly at him with a hint of a smile on her face.

The Centers in Two are divided helpfully into three colors: Red, Blue and Gold. Children begin in Red at age six; all move up to Blue; those deemed to have the determination, the drive, and the physical perfection necessary are granted entry into the four-year-long program at the Gold Center. Those who are not are sent into the mountain, into the workforce, or out to become Peacekeeprs. The Gold Center is exactly as Brutus recalls, exactly as it was on his first day there. There is the faint scent of sweat and foam mats, the clanking of weapons and weights, and even an authentic trainer barking orders at the latest crop of tall, well-muscled children.

"Who're the candidates this year?" he hears Enobaria ask, jolting him out of his nostalgia.

"Cain – " the trainer jabs his a thumb at a black-haired boy on the free weights – "and Claudia." He nods towards a blonde girl with a thick waist, flashing blue eyes, sparring with a boy who is precisely her height.

Training runs from five in the morning until approximately noon, at which time there's a half-hour lunch and then seven extra hours of work.

Brutus and Enobaria are required by the Organization to stay for at least forty-five minutes.

"Nostalgia, hm?" she asks him, glancing at the cafeteria plates of genetically engineered slop. Designed to provide enough energy and nothing more; perfect training for when you're stuck in the Arena and everything is either bony or poisonous, Brutus thinks.

It's strange, because the part of him that misses training does not miss this. The sense of palpable urgency about every single one of these kids, the tension that hangs in the air when they realize they have five months to get into the best shape of their lives only to waste it all away in the Arena.

He misses training because when he lands a blow on the side of the training dummy's head, slices them apart with broadswords, pitches javelins into targets, he is not thinking of anything at all.

No dwelling on the Hunger Games, no nagging thought in the back of his mind that reads where did Enobaria go? late at night at a Capitol party, even though he saw a painted man wrap his arm around hers and smirk at her and pull her away. No remembrance of the evening two weeks ago when Enobaria told him calmly and neutrally about what happens when you are fifteen and pretty and engaging and everyone in the Capitol desires you.

"You don't miss that, do you?" he asks, as they walk back home after lunch. "The training." She's wearing her standard-issue black coat, boots, her hands shoved in her pockets. (Despite the money and the admirers' gifts, he has never seen Enobaria in anything but District 2 Standard Issue. It makes him like her more.) Her breath makes little spirals in the sunny afternoon air.

"Of course not," she says sharply.

"You still throw, though, don't you?" he ventures. He's seen her knives lined up in the kitchen drawer, badly in need of sharpening.

"I wouldn't," she replies. "But it distracts me."

She smiles then, suddenly, and it unnerves him as always. It helps that the points interlock, that the diamond of her own invention still glitters in her left canine, but he misses her the way she was before – if there ever was a before to miss. Perhaps he misses what she might have been.

He loops his arm through hers then, and she leans against him, humming a sigh that is almost of relief.


	9. Chapter 9

At the end of the third month, cold, frozen rain comes pouring down in sheets. Rotation switches to Drusilla and Julius, who take instantly to the prospective Tributes for this year; there is always at least one update from them for every daily trip they take to the Gold Center. Enobaria expresses a fervent desire to rip the phone out of the wall, but refrains, because cutting off the phone would mean no more of those legally-tricky phone calls to One and Cashmere and Gloss and the only people she and Brutus have ever called friends.

One evening, while the sleet roars outside and the fire roars inside and Enobaria is busy making drip coffee from beans she managed to procure with money and persuasion, Brutus gathers his courage.

He waits calmly all night. She brings him some coffee; he drinks it in two gulps, with the hope of quelling his nerves. (It has no effect.) She is sprawled in front of the fireplace, reading Capitol newspapers and throwing the read portions into the fire, when he finally manages to dredge up some of his old fighter's instinct.

"I want to marry you," he says.

She looks up at him, firelight dancing in her eyes. "Is this like when you wanted to kiss me?" she inquires conversationally. All the better; marriage in Two is essentially a business agreement, he tells himself, no ceremony, no guests, just the lovely couple and the Justice House…

He coughs, suddenly fumbling for an answer. "No."

"No?" She raises her eyebrows and sits up, her left hand wrapped around a newspaper article about the Latest Most Popular Fashions. "Can I still dare you?"

He wants to tell her that he is nervous for something; that the impending Hunger Games and all the stress they bring makes him feel forever as though he is waiting for something bad to happen; and that he wants to be with her, bound to her even if it's by nothing more than the horrors of an Arena and a legal document.

"Come here." She waves her newspaper at him, and when he rises from the couch and draws nearer to her, she throws the crumpled paper into the fire. He feels her fingers dancing on the collar of his shirt. "That's a yes."

"Is it?" he murmurs. "I can never tell with you."

She kisses him – real, of course, always, how far they've come since that night in the Capitol apartments – and he can tell, and it's a yes.

"After the Games," she tells him that night, "all right, so we have something to look forward to."


	10. Chapter 10

Winter turns into spring. He learns to stop expecting things to wear off and die down. With her, they never do – but even if every ounce of passion went away, it would still be enough. They fit together enough for it to suffice.

When the trees are in full splendor, blooming into green boughs heavy with leaves and flowers in the sixth month of the year, they go back onto the two-week rotation for the Gold Training Center. Cain and Claudia fit back into their daily routine.

Neither of them are as easy to understand as Cato and Clove were, but Brutus knows it doesn't matter; they won't be mentors two years in a row, at least not together. Although he and Enobaria are easily the most popular, most marketable Victors from Two, there are rules that dictate this sort of thing. He should know; he's read the rulebooks so many times over.

He remembers hearing about the tradition in One, where, to celebrate engagement, the man buys the woman an expensive diamond ring (which is more likely to be a cheap diamond from their mines imposed on cheap gold from Two). He thinks of Enobaria, his Enobaria who never wears so much as a flicker of gold. Her teeth suffice, her true diamond with her forever, the finery that makes kissing harder than he wants to admit. Forever a reminder.

The weather is almost never truly hot in Two, with its mountain range and icy snow-capped ridges, but one balmy day, three weeks from the Reaping, Enobaria makes the suggestion of going swimming in the quarry pool.

The quarry pool is, of course, a disused quarry, filled years ago by the engineers and roped off by the Peacekeepers. The Gold center has a small lap pool, there are lakes aplenty in Two if you feel like freezing to death.

The quarry pool is theirs.

She always runs full-tilt off the cliffside to jump in, and he always makes a point to pause slightly, right on the edge – to leave himself room to change his mind. "Useless," Enobaria says, splashing him, tendrils of dark hair clinging to her bare shoulders. "By that point you're already too far." He pretends he didn't know this.

On the other side of the quarry crackles the ever-present electric fence. A reminder.

She wraps her legs around him and pulls him under with her.


	11. Chapter 11

Brutus wishes he could relive the moment just before. To him, the moment just before is pure bliss, and if he could live those sixty seconds for the rest of his life, looping over and over again, he would be content.

With sixty full, precious, unknown seconds left to go, Enobaria turns on the television and makes a snappy comment about President Snow's extra-special announcements cutting into her idea of an excellent dinner, which involves copious amounts of potatoes and turkey, endless crappy wine, and cake. Lots of cake.

Forty seconds to go and he settles next to her on the couch. In the kitchen, her calendar hangs serenely on the wall. It now counts down the days until the official end of the Games – four and a half weeks, or somewhere around there.

Thirty-five seconds to go, a sip of wine, the blaring Capitol insignia flickering on the screen.

Twenty seconds to go and they have abandoned the announcement in favor of careful (always careful, but sometimes they forget) kisses.

Ten seconds before the announcement begins, Enobaria knocks his glass of wine from his hand almost habitually, and it puddles in a deep bordeaux red on the floor, seeping into the rug.

His lips leave hers precisely at the moment their President's words begin to ripple through the living room.

And that night, though he feels they should be as close together as possible, they are on opposite sides of the bed.

She clutches the sheets around her, rigid, as if in death.


	12. Chapter 12

The calendar feels like a death sentence.

A thick blanket of fear settles over the house. Fear, tension, and the sweet June breeze, that comes in through the open windows with no regard for the turmoil inside.

One morning, a few days after the announcement, Enobaria says she cannot (not 'will not', he tells himself later, 'cannot', as if it makes a difference) be here, be with him, do this any longer than she already has. He has a feeling it is Enobaria's version of protecting him. He tries not to believe her, goes to the market alone to buy them some wine.

When he returns, the calendar is gone.

Now there is no ticking time bomb that hangs on the wall.

Now there is nothing.


	13. Chapter 13

On the day of the Reaping, the cartoonish Capitol escort who was right there when he was eighteen years old steps out of the Justice Building and onto the stage, her bright green hair done up in bows, her face stretched and tight so that she appears not to have aged, but rather to have melted.

The escort, who he identifies as Fantine, titters slightly as she fumbles in the Reaping Bowl. Brutus thinks about all those names in there, all of the names that do not belong to – 

"Enobaria Lapsis!" she cries. 

Such a terribly familiar sight. A grotesque pantomime. The woman he loves forced to stand up on that stage so long after her time should have passed. She holds her head high, looks straight ahead, and as there is a smattering of cheers from the assembled crowd, he sees her lips curl slightly in a sneer.

Fantine crosses to the considerably larger bowl of male names. She goes through the motions of feeling about for the correct slip of paper, the one that ruins someone's life all over again. Enobaria folds her arms across her chest. She looks cold.

"Julius – " says the escort cheerily, but she can only say the first name, and then Brutus throws himself off the cliff with no time left to change his mind.

"I volunteer."

(He'll remember the look on her face forever, always, her eyes wide and devoid of emotion. Empty.)


	14. Chapter 14

"I'm sorry," she says, the instant they are alone on this familiar fucking train.

He is mildly surprised, because Enobaria makes a habit of apologizing. Her argument is that being in the Arena is punishment enough for anything insensitive she has ever or will ever say. Brutus wants to agree with her sometimes, and other times it annoys him, and today it devastates him.

"Do you understand why I did it?" she asks. They are sitting across from each other in one of the train booths, an embarrassment of riches laid out before them. (Truffle-glazed potatoes, of course; he wonders if the Avoxes pity her.) He looks at her; her eyes are wet but her face is set in stone. "I went to all that trouble and you ruined it."

" _Trouble?_ " he repeats, incensed. It feels almost like an expertly placed stab wound. But stab wounds can be healed; they are not nearly as unpleasant.

"I said I didn't want to be with you," she clarifies, her voice strained, "and I left, all so that you wouldn't have to care if I died, and then you decided that wasn't good enough and you'd rather kill us both."

He considers this; it's true.

"I would care anyway," he says. "I did care anyway." He helps himself to a few spoonfuls of truffle-glazed potatoes. And then, when he needs something else to busy himself with, two airy dinner rolls as big as his fist. She sits across from him, glaring resolutely out the window, and he sees her left hand dart up to wipe imperceptibly under her eyes.

"Well, I lied." she says finally. She reaches forwards for the potatoes. Their eyes meet, across the table. "I love you."

He takes a bite of the roll. "I love you too."

She flashes him a smile, sardonic and so quick that he almost misses it. "But don't say I didn't warn you," she adds.

He feels it on his heels, the growing reality that he is about to go through all the pageantry and preparation and hell of the Arena again, but this time with her, this time knowing that she will either live or die, this time trying his hardest to kill the people he's spent countless dinners with and bought drinks at Capitol bars and congratulated during Victory Tours and gloated over and betted with, who have been through it the same as him and come the closest to understanding, who all have their unique, varyingly dysfunctional ways of dealing with the innate ruin.

Enobaria hands him a glass of wine from across the table. He watches her serve herself from the plate of potatoes. Her hands are shaking.

Despite it (and _it_ being everything, everything else), she is enough.


	15. Chapter 15

Arriving in the Capitol feels nostalgic, but Brutus quickly realizes the differences between this time and the last are too large to make any kind of connection between the two. 

When he and Enobaria arrive at the apartments (the same ones as last year), Drusilla, Julius, Amaranth, Orion, Ares, everyone who he's ever seen at a Capitol banquet, in a brochure, or at a decidedly alcoholic party in Two, is sitting in the living room.

"What are you doing here?" she asks abruptly. 

Drusilla shrugs. She's reclining on the chaise lounge, holding her glass of wine by the bowl instead of the stem. "The Capitol officially assigned Julius and Demetra to you, but…" She trails off, and he fills in the blank himself. It is almost worse than the idea of killing Cashmere and Gloss in battle. But it makes sense, of course. The people sitting in this apartment, one of the better ones that overlooks the Square and has big picture windows, are the only people who have any inkling of understanding.

"I thought we were supposed to lose our humanity a few decades back," Enobaria mutters next to him, and Amaranth, running a hand through her short grey hair, smirks.

"No one said anything about humanity." she replies. "Did they?"

(Amaranth Flox, 42nd Hunger Games, five kills, favored weapon: javelin, Arena: abandoned city. Brutus thinks back to all those hours spent watching tapes, in the back room of the Gold Academy.)

It strikes him then that this is good, that he can name all of these things. It will be required of him, and it will be useful. He picks a name; Cashmere Clear, 58th Hunger Games. Three kills. Favored weapon: whip. Arena: rolling hills filled with hidden caverns and poisonous groundcover.

Enobaria Lapsis, 60th Hunger Games, six kills, favored weapon: dagger, Arena: mountains. Currently: sitting on the armrest of a couch, and talking to Amaranth about something unimportant. He finds himself not caring if Enobaria wants to delude herself into the pageantry of another Hunger Games, if perhaps it will make time pass a little slower, if it will make this hurt any less. 

He'd rather die than kill her.


	16. Chapter 16

The day after the Opening Ceremonies is, if he remembers correctly, the day that group training starts. Tomorrow, he thinks to himself for only the second time in his life, group training starts.

It feels surreal and unknown, to realize repeatedly that this time, he will be the one thrown into the Arena and toyed with for the enjoyment of the populace. He keeps expecting (hoping) that one of the tall, chiseled tribute children will pop up in the apartment and start complaining about how they can't fight with each other during training. Everything would be as it should be – him and Enobaria fine-tuning their latest protegés. 

And, as sick as it makes him feel, Brutus knows that he would rest a little easier, knowing that he (at forty years old) wouldn't have to go back.

He's lying in bed, staring at the big glass picture window, wondering if it would be worse to change it to the prerecorded view of mountain peaks, or just leave it at the Capitol lights. He remembers being eighteen and trying to both project the excitement and adrenaline he felt inside whilst simultaneously hiding the gnawing fear in the pit of his stomach. He remembers the Opening Ceremonies just as they took place a few hours ago – all pomp and circumstance and thousands of red and white roses. He remembers a girl standing beside him, but not a woman, and certainly not someone he cared about.

He remembers changing the picture outside the window, and instantly feeling comfort, because of the fleeting moment of delusion – as if he wouldn't be waking up the next day to train for the Games with twenty-three others.

There is a rapping knock on the door that jolts him from his memories. He knows who it is immediately – since when has Enobaria ever cared whether anyone (even Tributes) gets sleep before the Hunger Games?

"Hello," she says, her voice lowered slightly. "I hope you don't mind if I stay."

He shakes his head and pulls some of the covers away. The city lights outside illuminate the contours of her face, the muscles in her smooth arms as she leans back against the pillows.

"Did you have fun?" she asks sardonically. There is a smear of gold eye paint across her temple.

"Of course I did," he says. "Nothing I would rather have been doing than parading around in a chariot and a suit of armor."

"At least you weren't wearing a fucking gown." She cleared her throat and adopted a sing-song, high-pitched, Capitol-inflected voice: "Channeling the goddesses of old!" A snort of laughter. "Right. I'm sure. The goddesses of old weren't slitting people's throats or pitching tridents."

He realizes who she's talking about instantly – Cashmere and Finnick. That's right, he thinks. He'd forgotten how Cashmere won her games; a quick slice with a sharpened spear, in the dead of night. In his mind's eye there is a picture of Enobaria as she was in her flowing white gown, elaborate golden belt on her waist and hair the color of dark chocolate. And a look on her face that was about as friendly and inviting as the sharp, gold-capped teeth that form her smile.

"You looked nice," he says fairly, almost to himself. He thinks again of the person she could have been, in white gowns and ruby red lipstick.

There's a short silence, in which Brutus hears several fireworks go off outside. A loud cheer erupts from somewhere in the square.

"Haymitch was mumbling about pulling one over on the Gamemakers," she mentions casually.

"He was probably drunk." She laughs. "Did you see any empty bottles?"

"No. No empty bottles, no morphling syringes, nothing."

"He was sober?" he asks incredulously.

"I believe so."

"I'm shocked and disappointed."

"I know. So am I." Her cheek is on his shoulder, and he can feel her smile. He does, too, without thinking, and as he realizes he has nearly forgotten about what tomorrow brings, he suddenly understands completely, exactly why she left that first time. Somehow he knows that because he has felt this kind of happiness, it will feel all the worse when it is taken away from him. Worse, even, than if he had never felt it in the first place. At least he would never have known, never had anything to regret leaving behind.

"You know," he says. She looks up at him; the dim light that filters through the window is barely enough for him to see her look of confusion. "You know, I'm – really sorry. About everything."

She pauses for a moment, at first unsure of what he's talking about, and then –

"I know. So am I."

She sits up suddenly and reaches over him, to find the remote on the table and slide her finger across it. Three familiar mountain peaks spring into being outside. A row of houses, a dilapidated road, a deep night sky of one-a.m. black. Enobaria leans into him, tracing her fingers over his shoulders, ignoring her own tears in a very impersonal fashion.

He wishes he could flip back pages on that calendar in the kitchen, live in this hour over and over and over again, never progress in time again, walk out the bedroom door and find out what they would have been like.


	17. Chapter 17

The training center is a steel-coated, shined-up version of the Gold gym. Instead of smelling like old foam mats with a hint of rubber, something crisp and slightly antiseptic hangs in the air. The stainless walls have been buffed until they're practically mirrors, the high ceilings are filled with the whir of fans, and the temperature must be hovering around fifty degrees.

It is exactly as Brutus remembers.

The only difference is that, instead of twenty-three other people between the ages of twelve and eighteen, raring to get started, he and Enobaria are greeted by nothing but empty air.

He looks at the clock. Quarter to ten.

He leans against the highly polished wall and surveys the embarrassment of riches before him. Spears, javelins, knives, swords, bows, heavy kettle balls, dummies with targets painted onto their chests, a high netted climbing wall, a long, silver row of bars set at least fifteen feet in the air. Atala, whose straight, tight braids have switched into a cropped black bob for today, strolls into the center and eyes the two of them warily.

"Hello, Atala," says Enobaria conversationally. She smiles – closed-lipped, he notes, which is how you know if Enobaria likes you or not. Nothing scares people off faster than a flash of golden fangs.

Atala allows herself a small nod and a half-smile back before she turns around, checks the clock on the wall, and steps into the hallway. Brutus isn't surprised, because he's seen Atala and Enobaria clink wine glasses sardonically at the ends of tables, pose for a flash of lights at the annual banquet. Although each time he pretended not to notice, he has also seen Enobaria slip her a couple of tightly-folded bills and slip into the training center (just to practice, of course, although it certainly will come in handy now).

It must be easier, he reasons, for the other woman to remain impersonal, now that things have changed.

About five minutes later Atala walks back in with the famed, beloved, incredibly young tributes from 12. Brutus doesn't even have to think to know their names; Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark, 74th Games. Preferred weapons: bow and hand-to-hand, respectively. Arena: lake. He recalls them as being ridiculously overhyped. The girl might have good aim, but in what world should the Hunger Games be won based on a suicide threat from two starry-eyed teenaged lovers?

Everdeen is giving Enobaria a strange stare out of the corner of her eye. Enobaria smiles. This time she makes absolutely no effort, and consequently, it comes off more as a baring of teeth than an actual smile.

The girl from 12 looks away instantly and Brutus finds that his morning has improved slightly.

By the time ten o'clock comes and goes, and still only about half of the technically-required twenty-four have deigned to come downstairs, Atala repeats the same speech he's sure she gives every year: combat, agility, strength, and all of the other stations, like knot-tying and plant recognizing and god knows what else. It doesn't matter. He's already eyeing the spears and he knows Enobaria will head straight for the knives.

"Have fun," she tells him quietly. Her hand traces down his left arm momentarily, and then she's gone on the other side of the gym. He sees Johanna Mason twirling a dagger in her hands and narrowing her eyes.  _Great. Enobaria will love that._

Chaff tries to contest him while they're pitching spears into the targeted dummies. Whoever makes the bullseye from the farthest distance wins. "Wins what, exactly?" he says cautiously, wary of doing anything that might make Chaff thing they're involved in an alliance.

"Drinks, of course!" Chaff cries. "After the interviews. Two rounds, at least."

He considers this for a moment.

"Fine. You're on."

He wins by the tiniest margin. From a hundred feet back, they ask Gloss to confirm that it really hit the center mark. Gloss, grinning, pronounces it in by an eighth of an inch. Chaff swears. Brutus, from the corner of his eye, notes the presence of Peeta Mellark and the six or seven spears that have been sunk into a single dummy.

"Good afternoon," says Enobaria at lunch, pushing two tables together and then sliding onto a bench beside him. She kisses his cheek in what must be less than a second, but that doesn't stop Cashmere, across from them, from adopting a simpering smile. In the largest amount of defiance he can muster, he loops his arm around Enobaria's waist and pulls her a little bit closer. He's almost sure he feels her tense and then relax, although public displays of affection tend to do that to Enobaria.

"Ladies," Johanna greets them, completely naked and covered in shining oil. She tilts her chin at the three of them and then locks eyes with Brutus. He stares back at her, undaunted, because Johanna's usual antics of stripping and offering barbed sarcasm to people unsolicited are less fearsome and more likely to inspire amusement. Or pity. Enobaria, of course, is usually more inclined to be as pissed off as possible. Johanna, nonetheless, sits down and begins picking at her nails. "I'm not sure how much you've seen, but Nuts and Volts are in prime form this year."

"Nuts and bolts?"

Peeta Mellark, the baker boy from District 12, has arrived, bearing a tray full of bread and vegetables and followed closely by Chaff (whose plate contains exclusively meat).

" _Volts_ ," drawls Cashmere. She reaches up behind her and draws her twin brother into the seat next to her. "Haven't you seen them? The ones from Three. Something" – she twirls a finger next to her temple – "is majorly fucked up there, if you catch my meaning." Gloss smiles at his food.

Mellark nods slowly. "Those two?" He looks over at the table in the corner. Wiress and Beetee, Nuts and Volts, are huddled over some knot someone tied in training. Wiress, as per usual, appears to be somewhere else.

"Yeah, those two." Cashmere laughs a little into her bottle of water. Johanna stabs at a piece of stew meat and smirks.

"Right." The boy's face appears to harden slightly. "I'm gonna get some more food."

"Keep your strength up," calls Gloss after him. His sister, his mirror image, gives him a playful shove.  

Lunch only goes for half an hour. Brutus knows this, but somehow the time seems to go by in five minutes. He talks about Chaff buying him drinks, about Enobaria bribing Atala. He becomes embroiled in either a discussion or an argument with Gloss about the Victors from 12.

He lets Enobaria try and instruct him on proper knife-throwing techniques. She keeps telling him to _never, ever, hold it in your fist like a fucking caveman unless you want to throw it into your foot and you don't want that do you so you should just listen to her_. He realizes that he should probably be disturbed by the fact that Enobaria can talk at length about how to hit the carotid artery, or how to hit a leg in just the right spot to provoke immobility (back of the knee), but instead, he finds it comforting that she is so methodical.

Eventually, she gives up trying to teach him anything, because for all his skill at launching spears he appears to have none of the finesse or quick reflexes necessary to throw three knives at once into a perfectly straight line on a dummy (which she shows off to him at least three times). Brutus is watching her and Cashmere throw daggers at each other and catch them by the handles, which looks more like a circus act than a combat exercise, when Gloss elbows him in the ribs and jerks his head over to the archery range. "Look."

Tax, the trainer, is pitching foam birds into the air as high as he possibly can, and for each faux duck that is launched to the ceiling, an arrow hits it square in the eye and brings it down to earth. Katniss Everdeen, her gaze trained on each and every one of them, even when there are three in the air at once, is landing them left and right. She reloads the bow without looking behind her at the quiver on her back, the way he always did during training; her arrows don't fly before she's ready to make the kill shot, the way Enobaria's always did. She does it coolly (not him), calmly (not Enobaria), and with restraint (neither of them, in any way).

"Enobaria," he says, without looking away. He hears the clatter of knives on the floor.

"What?"

"Look over – " He stops abruptly. It appears that everyone in the room has paused their training momentarily to watch the girl from 12. Johanna is hanging naked on the steel bars, riveted.

The last bird falls from the ceiling and Katniss' bow lowers. She looks over at the assembled Victors. Chaff and Seeder are staring in amazement; Cashmere with utter disdain, Gloss with a mixture of hatred and envy. Enobaria, her cheeks flushed from her knife efforts, mutters something to herself and turns away, looking both disconcerted and angry.

Enobaria is apparently still angry when he tells her that they have to request Katniss as their ally. Angry, he thinks, is perhaps an understatement.

"No," she growls. "Absolutely not. You know how that girl won her games? Not by making a kill, although she was kind enough to mercy-kill Cato beforehand, I don't know if you remember that, but by holding hands with her little boyfriend and making a big scene." She looks sweaty and in need of a drink.

"Did you even see her shoot?" He can despise someone and still respect their abilities.

"I – she – " sputters Enobaria, outraged.

He tells Julius himself to make a note and ask Haymitch after dinner about the possibility of an alliance.

Enobaria comes to dinner still looking a little exhausted, her hair messy, wearing a tank top and holding a glass of wine by the bowl.

She is beautiful.


	18. Chapter 18

"Been a while since I've been on the other side of the assessments," Gloss is saying. In his hands he is twisting his district token somewhat maniacally, but with just enough nonchalance to write it off as a nervous quirk. The onyx ring is leaving dents in his skin. "Guess the scores are a little more important this time around."

"You'll do fine." Brutus shrugs noncomittally. The strangeness of looking on Cashmere and Gloss as his enemies, as people to be wary of, as rivals on a twelve-point scale, has not quite worn off. He doubts it will once they're dropped into an arena, but at least any decision-making will be held off by the usual alliance - already agreed upon, of course. Words weren't even needed. As simple as sending that Avox girl over with a bottle of wine and a silent invitation. (He's remembering now, unfortunately, why the tributes never get so much of a taste of wine the night before assessments.)

Enobaria, to his right, has her fists clenched and resting in her lap; she is staring rather intensely at a spot on the polished steel wall ahead of her, and even when he nudges her gently her eyes only flicker to his for a second.

"It's  _weird_ , though," Gloss mutters. The ring stops moving and he slips it onto his finger. "I mean, who knows?" He elbows Cashmere, propped on her elbows and nursing what Brutus assumes is a headache and not paralyzing nervousness, "few days and we could all be gone." He looks around the room - and it prompts Brutus to follow him, a quick sweep of decades worth of faces, a macabre little observation that neither of them are equipped to think of as more than a joke.

Gloss is called first. Ten minutes later and his sister follows. The hum of conversation dims slightly, a dinner party with a few participants missing. His mind turns easily to swords and spears and cold blades ready for detonation in his hands, things that he can understand more readily, things that he has dealt in all his life. The sense of control he can feel at his fingertips no longer comforts him; it disgusts him. Even if he thinks of the calming chill of the Training Center, the idea of a weapon given to him right now - that idea only leads to the image of a spear sunk in the side of Cashmere's temple, relief from her headache, or a sword finding its mark on Gloss's neck, dirty that luxurious ring with blood when his hands reach to clutch at it.

_VASIL, Brutus. Please report for individual assessment._

_  
_"Hey - " She catches his hand as he stands up, rises with him for a moment. "You'll do good, yeah?"

It sounds like a plea. 

"Yeah - " and the two Peacekeepers suddenly flanking him shove her back down, ignore the glare and the muttered stream of violence they get in return, and he is ushered through three sets of doors and into the high-ceilinged room, completely empty of everything.

Plutarch Heavensbee's voice as heard through some kind of slight distortion.

"Mr. Vasil, welcome back. You have ten minutes to present your chosen skill."

He brings out the holograms and a sword, duels with a projection on the mat in the center of the gym. The dull voices of the Gamemakers, thousands of miles away from him, fade away entirely as sweat beads on his skin, as he swings the sword above his head and brings the heavy blade down into the surprisingly solid shoulder of the hologram.

Chaff, Victory Tour five or six years ago. The man from 11 is trading blows with him in the lobby of a Capitol hotel, and he is so drunk he cannot make out who is Chaff and who isn't, and even as he tells himself he's proving them all so right, proving that they're nothing more than animals, these District people, even the Victors, even the best...and he slams his fist into Chaff's left shoulder even as Peacekeepers arrive to restrain him, and he is going to go back to Two for this, a week early, and Enobaria will not be there in the house next to his because she is still here, undoubtely proving a wonderful addition to the beds of so many of those painted peacocks screaming in that hotel lobby -

He wrenches it free immediately, switches sides of the field with it, twists around, smashes the handle of the sword on the back of its head, and backstabs as his killing blow. Fitting.

Heavensbee turns around, a glass of champagne clutched in his hand. "Thank you. You may go." He scratches a note of something, and they lock eyes momentarily.

Something strange; the Head Gamemaker narrows his eyes, opens his mouth as if to say something, ask something - but no, he was imagining it, he hasn't eaten today and he aches from a battle with a hologram. A thousand years of sprinting up the mountain couldn't have prepared him for another Games. Not now, too late.

He leaves the gym mechanically, immediately takes an elevator back up to the apartments to shower and order food. Amaranth and Julius are lounging on the couch, watching an early broadcast news report about the assessments.

"Good news and bad news," Amaranth crows. "You're predicted for a less-than-perfect ten. And I had you on the books for eleven, but I guess I'll be coughing up, won't I, Julius?" She tosses a leather purse at Julius, and he catches it, grinning.

She turns around then; "you look so _tired_ ," she observes, "and without Enobaria, too. Strange."

"Yeah, well." He grabs a relatively unscathed roll from the carnage on the dining table. "I was more focused on getting the hell out of there. Any news on that Everdeen girl? What'd Haymitch say?"

"He said she's still thinking about it," Julius says, counting up his coins.

"Bullshit." He bites the roll in two.

Amaranth raises her eyebrows. "I mean, sure, she doesn't seem like much of a thinker...all that head-over-heels teenager crap...."

He stares thoughtfully at the remaining half of bread in his hands. Something's strange about the star-crossed lovers this year. Something highly unusual is going on with the tributes from 12 - and not just them, either. Johanna Mason, sitting her naked self down at meals and making conversation? Finnick Odair, Chaff and Seeder, Cecelia and Woof, making excuses to chat companionably at the camouflage station. Morphlings, painting down Peeta Mellark in flowers.

"Anyone else mention alliances?" he asks them casually.

"Well, Glory did as a formality, but we figured you and Cash and Gloss had already worked it out."

"Of course we did."

"Well, settled, then," Amaranth declares, and turns back to the coverage, tapping her fingers anxiously on the arm of the plump green velvet sofa.

He cannot ignore the lingering images of the hologram opposite him; wonders what he would have done (will have to do) when it takes on one of the faces of the people in the holding room of that gym. The sickening image of fighting Enobaria for the crown of Victor enters his head.

He banishes it immediately, although it brings with it a tide of other concerns. _If you're the last two left. What happens then? You aren't sixteen. They won't fall for that shit._

 _Then you die,_ he answers himself.  _You die, not her._

It comes so easily. Without even a second's hesitation. Without even a thought. 


	19. Chapter 19

He thinks of the calendar back home in Two.

Three days. Strange, how time speeds up when there's less of it.

Enobaria is asleep, sprawled on the bed with the window tuned to her mountain specifications. He wonders if that morning of the Reaping either of them thought how they'd never see it for real again.

She stirs when he lies down next to her in the half-dark; the faux starlight radiates over them and casts an eerie glow on things. 

"Everdeen got twelve," she mumbles, rolling over, tangling the sheets around her legs. Her arm snakes over his chest, her fingertips taking hold of his shoulder. "So'd that boy, too."

"What did you get, again?" he asks her quietly.

"Nine? Ten? Don't remember."

"They must've done something pretty damn spectacular."

She makes a small noise of disconcertion. "We kill them first," she murmurs.

"You take her, I'll take him," he tells her placatingly.

"Mm." The grip she has on his shoulder tightens; he feels fingernails digging into his skin. "'Kay." 

"You know only one of us can walk out of there."

She says nothing. He presses onwards, doggedly, the feeling that it needs to be said hanging over him. If not now, when? In the Arena, so that they can broadcast it everywhere? The role of lovers in the Games has already been filled, and far more healthily and less off-puttingly by a pair of sweet-faced kids. Let them reveal everything. Let their conversations be replayed to crowds of adoring fans.

"If it comes down to it - "

"Don't," she moans quietly. "Please just don't. Bad enough, think about killing everyone we know. Not gonna plan on killing you, too."

She sighs sharply.

"'m so tired. Just let me sleep. And stay here. And don't tell me about how we'll die. Tell me we're just gonna go home in a couple weeks like normal."

He pauses. He thinks about how much worse this will make it, not telling her now when he has the chance to do it right, about how much more it will hurt them when they're trapped with nowhere else to run.

"We're going home in a couple weeks," he tells her. "Like normal. With everyone. And reset that calendar. And we'll go up the mountain, I'll run with you, like I said I would."

He feels her relax.


End file.
